


I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took an excuse

by middlemarch



Category: GLOW (TV 2017), Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: "May I call you Mary", Alternate Universe, Angst, Conversations, Crossover, Doctors & Physicians, F/M, Gen, Hospitals, Nurses & Nursing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:41:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28028727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: The hospital was the most crowded place Sam had ever been so fucking alone.
Relationships: Sam Sylvia/Ruth Wilder
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6
Collections: Mercy Street Crossover Advent Silver and AU





	I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took an excuse

“Sam—”

“Mr. Sylvia,” he snapped, because fuck, he was wearing a nightgown that didn’t cover his ass or his balls. 

“Mr. Sylvia,” she said, sweet as honey but with a fucking edge buried deep enough she’d fool most people, “there must be someone we can call to come pick you up.” 

Sam gave her a long look. Dark-haired, more like Carolyn than Ruth, but arguably his type, except that she was wearing boxy blue scrubs and fucking clogs and what had happened to the nurses of his youth, with their neat little white dresses and those clever origami caps perched on their hair? This one, this Mary, she’d have been a wetdream in one of those old uniforms, her dark hair sleek beneath the cap, her round hips making the A-line skirt taut just where it should be and that fucking rack of hers…

“Mr. Sylvia?”

“There’s no one,” he said. “What do they call you? Am I supposed to call you just Nurse?”

“Mary’s fine. When I float on peds, the kids usually call me Nurse Mary,” she said.

“Your friends call you Mary?” he asked. Why the fuck that was a loaded question he had no idea but her pretty little mouth turned down and he thought, _fuck_ , she’d be a knock-out with some actual make-up, even some lipgloss, and if she weren’t wearing a blue cotton burlap sack, but she wore no make-up, just like Ruth out of the ring, and she wore her shapeless uniform like there wasn’t a bra underneath and a pair of panties on that sweet, tight ass. Like he’d gone blind when he collapsed on a sidewalk. He’d seen everything, the blue sky and Justine’s frown and Ruth’s bare skin wet gold in the hot tub…

“Mr. Sylvia, are you sure there isn’t someone? I hate to call a taxi when you just had a heart attack—”

“An MI, that’s what the doctors say, right? Dr. Lee and that prick Foster, lecturing me about drugs, like I can’t see track marks—”

“You said Ruth. You were calling her name when you were coming out of the anesthesia,” Mary said, all color gone out of her voice. He must have touched a nerve. That was his specialty, anyway. It was good to know he hadn’t lost fucking everything.

“She’s in Vegas,” he said. “Too far away.”

“You sure? It sounded like, the way you said her name, it sounded like she was the person you’d want to drive you home,” Mary said, cool as a shiv. He’d had one heart attack; they weren’t supposed to give him another.

“What I want doesn’t matter,” he said softly. Ruth’s blue eyes, looking up at him over the cards, in the candlelight, in the unforgiving glare of the ER _I thought you said we’re all replaceable._ He could want her, fucking yearn for her like a pathetic old man and she wouldn’t come.

“I think it does,” Mary said. 

“You’re supposed to discharge me now. I can’t just hang around here for six hours, waiting to see if she arrives,” Sam said. Mary tilted her head, thoughtful as a fucking owl, if an owl had gorgeous tits and smelled like Ivory soap.

“You know, I’m not sure the paperwork is done properly. Dr. Foster, he can be a little hasty and I think they ordered a consult with the chaplain, Henry’s such a dear but you mustn’t frighten him, Sam. And you haven’t had your breakfast,” she said, glancing at the shit he’d left on the tray, the half-eaten bran muffin in its sad, wilted wrapper, the grapefruit he’d disemboweled but had refused to taste, something yellow that had purported to be a scrambled egg and the tiny packets of pepper he was supposed to sprinkle on it. The three cups of prune juice that had to be a fucking cosmic joke. “I’ll call dietary to get you a meal. What’s Ruth’s number?”

“Call the Fan-Tan, in Vegas. Ask for Ruth Wilder,” he said. “They’ll know where to find her.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Florence Nightingale.


End file.
